Survivor's Anguish
by TacticianZephine
Summary: Knock Out was once part of an entire squadron of medics. When they were gone, he had a loyal protector and assisstant. Now, he's lucky to find a competent Vehicon to hold a tray of tools while he works. What happened?


**Hey, guys. I did a thing.**

* * *

"'_Hand over all your projects to Shockwave, Knock Out, because he can obviously handle all of the sensitive materials contained in your lab!_' Oh, _yes_, my liege! Right _away_, my liege-DAMMIT!"

If I knock over one more of these vials, I swear, I am setting fire to this lab, and then the damned Eradicons can deal with it.

Since when does the title "Chief Medical Officer" carry no weight? Am I not _still_ the one Lord Megatron comes to when he powers up with a pounding processorache, or the one that repairs his soldiers when they either are damaged in battle or hurt themselves doing something stupid? I have been nothing if not loyal, in my own way, and _this is the thanks I get_?

My credibility shredded because Starscream refused to take responsibility for tampering with Dark Energon, my projects turned over to Shockwave, who will undoubtedly let them sit and gather dust in that off-site lab of his... and I _still_ have soldiers to repair, on top of all of this! But the part of all of this that _really_ grinds my gears...

... is that I have to do it alone.

There used to be more of us. Medics, I mean. There were sixteen sentient medics, plus sixteen drones: eight medicroids for the Med. Bay and eight field drones. We sentient medics were divided into units, each with a captain who acted as our superior and would report to the Chief Medical Officer, Chop Shop, who wasn't actually a medic, he merely filed reports, and each put in charge of two field drones.

My unit was Combat and Triage, which meant that we did work in the Med. Bay when we were required, but our forte was field medicine and then subsequently appraising the casualties after a battle, in short, deciding who would get care when, and who wouldn't get it at all. There were five of us in C/T, myself and four grounders.

First, there was Scalpel. He was the smallest of us, which is saying something, considering I am the one saying it. He didn't speak any kind of understandable language, it was mostly a broken jumble of sounds and some words. I'm not certain if he even knew our names. Scalpel was best not at repairing, but at surgery, and at removing shrapnel from wounds. Shrapnel and debris. I once watched him remove a nest of live scraplets one at a time from the throat of an Eradicon soldier who'd been lost in Autobot territory.

Next, Buildup, who used to be a mechanic in the gladiator pits, not at Kaon, like Scalpel and Flatline, but in Tarn. He specialized in amputations and prothetics. We tried to keep him away from battlefield casualties, because as he was hacking off their limbs (without anesthetic), he would cheerily inform them that he would have a prosthetic limb available so that they could "continue to contribute to the noble Decepticon cause," or some such prattle. I do _not_ miss him.

And Buzzsaw, who was once a turbofox breeder. He was better at euthanasia than at medicine, but when you are up to your chestplates in wounded and know that some aren't going to live even if you get them into surgery right then, isn't that the better alternative to marking them code red and letting them suffer there? Lord Megatron certainly thought so. Buzzsaw was the one name no soldier ever wanted to hear when they were being examined in Triage. I've frightened more than a few to death just mentioning it. On the battlefield, Buzzsaw was our emergency transport, who would bridge the wounded out to the lab.

Finally there was Flatline, our captain, who, as I said, was a pit medic. She was probably the most skilled, after myself of course. She was the more aggressive member of the medical staff; where the rest of us would duck through cover fire to get to a fallen soldier, or drop in from above, in my case, Flatline would cut down any and all in her way, occasionally taking out a fellow Decepticon or medic. I truly enjoyed working with her, I could have intelligent conversations with her. I think I might even dare to call her a friend. I'm not afraid to admit that I wish she had been spared.

The other units were Lab Med, the seven who stayed in the Med. Bay to receive casualties and handle non-combat injuries, and Mortuary, the four who handled the remains of the dead soldiers. I still don't know what they did with them, now I just strip corpses for parts and organize them when I have spare time. Both of these units were only deployed into combat if they were needed.

They were all good medics. All of them, even Buildup. It would be so much easier if even one of them had survived the end run on Polyhex.


End file.
